Simple Stoic Advice
Learn something new
Learn something new
The beautiful thing about Stoic philosophy is the advice contained within it is just as applicable today as it was when it was first written all those many years ago. We can learn a great deal from interpreting the advice provided and using it to our advantage as we go throughout our own lives.
Today’s quote comes to us courtesy of Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.7:
Quote
“Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions.”
Advice
What type of life are we living if we are not living it for ourselves? Philosophy is meant to delve into the soul and have us explore ourselves. In fact, Seneca, writing to Lucilius, states the importance of philosophy:
“I am sure you realize, Lucilius, that no one can live a truly happy life, or even a bearable life, without philosophy; also, that while it is complete wisdom that renders a life happy, even to begin that study makes life bearable.”
But yet we find ourselves consumed in other aspects of life, aspects that push us and pull us in multiple directions, aspects that prevent us from being able to fully investigate ourselves and our purpose. Many of us live a life where we do not even control it, we wake up and realize three years have passed, we’re at the same job, looking to get the same promotion, and yet we’re no much closer now than we were three years prior. And in the meantime, we have slaved away at this only to lose three years of our lives. Of ourselves.
“A greater joy awaits you once you set aside your childish mind, once philosophy registers you as a grown man. For childhood — or rather, childishness, which is worse — has not yet left us. Worse yet, we have the authority of grown men but the faults of children, of infants even. Children are terrified of trivial things, infants of imagined things, and we of both.”
Sometimes we can be adults, yet our minds are still those of a child, never truly allowing ourselves to think outside the box, to live, to stop being jerked about by everyone else’s demands.
Sometimes, we just need to stop and once again take control of our lives. And we can do this by learning something new, by investigating ourselves, by spending quality time with us, where we are in charge of what we do, say, and think.
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